FBI And DHS Blunders Reveal Names Of Child Abuse Victims Via Facebook IDs

http://bit.ly/2IVQH0I The U.S. government is revealing the identities of global victims of child abuse, Forbes has discovered. Investigators at the FBI and the DHS have failed to conceal minor victims’ identities in court documents where they disclosed a combination of teenagers’ initials and their Facebook identifying numbers—a unique code linked to Facebook accounts. Forbes discovered it was possible to quickly find their real names and other personal information by simply entering the ID number after “facebook.com/”, which led to the minors’ accounts. In two cases unsealed this month, multiple identities were easily retrievable by simply copying and pasting the Facebook IDs from the court filings into the Web address. (Forbes is withholding names and other information from the court documents to protect the victims’ identities.) In one recently unsealed case in Nebraska, an FBI search warrant application not only provided the initials and Facebook ID number, but detailed explicit conversations between a then 14-year-old female minor and a 28-year-old male. In graphic personal private chats, they discussed sexual acts with one another. Facebook had provided the chats in a tip to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), which then handed the information to the police. Investigators then requested, and successfully obtained, data from the social media giant for both the male and the minor’s accounts. The same chats were disclosed in an unsealed complaint against the perpetrator, which also provided the initials and Facebook ID of the minor. (She was 14 at the time but is now 16.) That complaint also notes that the victim sent 27 explicit images of herself deemed to be “child pornography” to the groomer. The perpetrator pleaded guilty to his crimes and was sentenced to 36 months in prison in early 2018. In another search warrant application, a DHS investigator in Wisconsin disclosed three Facebook IDs of girls investigators believed to be targets of grooming in the Philippines. It was alleged that a 63-year-old man used the social media site to find and groom them. The man indicated he planned to visit the Philippines and had “expressed an interest in engaging in sexual activity with minor females.” Again the private Facebook chats of those apparent minors were disclosed in the warrant. YOU MAY ALSO LIKE The government later found that the suspect, who has not yet been charged, had indeed travelled to the Philippines on multiple occasions, most recently in January. Manila-based investigators then contacted four individuals who said they’d been molested by the alleged perpetrator, with one minor saying they’d talked with him over Facebook though he’d used another identity, according to the warrant application. The government didn’t disclose whether or not any of the Facebook IDs it published were of individuals who were physically assaulted. Forbes contacted the DOJ on the two cases but had not received a response to requests for comment at the time of publication. The documents for both investigations remain unsealed. ‘DOJ failure to protect abused children’ The DOJ is now coming under fire for not protecting children’s identities. “Any time information is released, protecting the victim’s identity has to be of the utmost importance. In Canadian courts, this type of information would not be released for public consumption nor should it be,” said Signy Arnason, associate executive director at the Canadian Centre for Child Protection. “I am amazed. Allowing anything to go into the public domain that would allow a child victim to be identified is absolutely forbidden. Pretty sure that if anything like that were to happen in the U.K. the persons responsible would find themselves in very hot water,” added John Carr, a consultant who previously worked with Microsoft and the U.K. government on child exploitation and internet safety. Seamus Hughes, a part-time consultant on searching U.S. court filings database Pacer, has found similar cases where real identities of victims have been inadvertently exposed in public documents. “It’s a problem that unfortunately occurs with too much regularity. DOJ must take seriously their responsibility to redact the victim’s personal information,” says Seamus, whose day job is deputy director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. Hughes says he’s contacted attorneys’ offices across three different districts alerting them to the issue in the last six months. He’s had no response.